You should divide your book into 5 equal sections. For example, if your book has 100 pages, you should have five 20 page sections. You should read the appropriate section for each meeting.
Requirements:
PERSON A - GROUP LEADER - This group member will be responsible for both keeping the group on task throughout the meeting as well as responding to the week's topical questions, listed below.
PERSON B - QUOTATION FINDER - This group member will be responsible for finding 5 important, meaningful quotations from their section of the text. They will also facilitate a discussion regarding these quotations.
PERSON C - KEY QUESTIONER - This group member will be responsible for providing 5 open-ended questions regarding the week's reading section. These questions, and their responses, will be posted on the group's wiki.
PERSON D - GROUP SUMMARIZER - This group member will be responsible for posting a thorough, two-paragraph summary of the group's Friday meeting, to be posted on the group wiki no later than the Sunday following the meeting.
Groups will decide appropriate penalties for group members who fail to uphold their responsibilities.
NOTE: If your book club has three members, the roles B and C should be combined; if your book club has five members, two students should take the role of C (5 questions each).
Week One: October 1
Topic: Characters (Section 1 out of 5 of your text)
Assignment:
1. On your group's wiki page, describe the main characters in your text. What makes them interesting? What is their story or background? Why are you drawn to them? Conversely, are there any characters that you just cannot stand? Why not? (A)
Brian Wertheim
The main characters so far have been the author, and the unabomber: Theodore Kaczynski. The first chapter the author talks about he interviewed previous serial killers to inside their head. One person he keeps referring to is George Metesky. I was drawn to them to hear how they portray the crimes that they committed.
2. Person B should share and discuss their selected quotations, using Save The Last Word techniques.
Evan Angles "Criminals are no different than law abiding people when it comes to being creatures of habit” “The communications Finney showed Brussel were the work of a neat, obsessively meticulous man” “I was drinking too much, exercising like a fiend because I was too wound up to relax, and doing all the things I’ve always counseled the people I who work for me not to do.” “Those were just 3 of the 150 or so active cases I was working on at that time.” “The newspaper photos of the captured mad bomber show a smiling man with a twinkle in his eye who is clearly enjoying all the attention and publicity. I find this very significant.”
3.
4.Person D should share his/her questions with the group, as well as post the questions on the group's wiki page
Steven Gallagher 1. How many bombs did the "Mad Bomber" plant and where were they placed? The "Mad Bomber" planted 32 bombs during a 16 year period. He planted the bombs in public places all around New York City. 2. Why do you think the author put in a chapter about his childhood about another bomber? The author put this into the book because when he was a child he remembered how they caught the bomber. The police went to a psychiatrist and the psychiatrist gave the police a good place of where to find him. They began to look for him and the psychiatrist was right where he said he was going to be. So this might show how they are going to find this bomber. 3. Why did the Police go to a psychiatrist to help close the case and find the bomber? The police went to a psychiatrist because they needed to know how to get into the head of a bomber. This helps them start at a base and can work from there. 4. Did the psychiatrist help find the bomber they were looking for? Yes, he did because the psychiatrist gave the police a good description of what he would look like and where he would live. The police went out to where the psychiatrist said to look for and he was right. 5. If it wasn't for the psychiatrist would the police have found the "Mad Bomber?" Yes, I think the police would have eventually found this "Mad Bomber" but there could have been more bombs and there could be more deaths because of him.
Week Two: October 8
Topic: Language (Section 2 out of 5 of your text)
Assignment:
1. On your group's wiki page, discuss the type of language that your book contains. Is it easy to read? Conversational? "Classic"? Does it use a lot of words you don't understand? What grade level do you think the book is written at, and why? (B)
2. Person B should share and discuss their selected quotations, using Save The Last Word techniques.
Brian Wertheim
Page 55
“In the letter, the bomber blamed computers for a variety of problems, ranging from invasion of privacy to “environmental degradation through excessive economic growth.” Notwithstanding the “Freedom Club” reference, maybe I’d been right all along about F.C. meaning “F * Computers” to this guy, at least subconsciously.”
Page 37
“Like George Metesky and most other cowardly “distance crime” offenders, he wouldn’t be comfortable around other people, certainly not to the extent that he would trust them.”
Page 56
““People with advanced degrees aren’t as smart as they think they are. If you’d had any brains you would have realized that there are a lot of people out there who resent bitterly the way techno-nerds like you are changing the world and you wouldn’t have been dumb enough to open an unexpected package from an unknown source.””
Page 54
“It may be that the bomber felt compelled to get back into the limelight after other had moved definitively into center stage. The mammoth World Trade Center towers were bombed on Feb. 26, 1993 by Islamic terrorists in New York City. The F.B.I. engaged in a six-week standoff with the Branch Davidian sect in Waco, Texas, before the entire compound went up in an apocalyptic blaze on April 19, 1993, just as its messianic leader had predicted.”
Page 53
“And this man was diabolical. Repeatedly, the Unabomber had carefully disguised his books to look like ordinary objects or packages – a notebook in one case, a pile of wood in another. But he was even cleverer than that. In at least two cases, he put insufficient postage on his mail-bomb packages, apparently so they would be sent back to the listed sender, who in fact was the bomber’s real intended target. Whatever delusional system he might be operating under, it was clearly not one that rendered him irrational or erratic. While clearly disturbed, he was a sane individual with the ability to organize, plan, and think many steps ahead.”
3. Person C should post the meeting summary on the group's wiki page after class. In our group discussion we talked about the life of the Unabomber. We talked about the cabin that he lived in, also we talked about how he went to Harvard at the age of 16. In this discussion we also talked about what kind of bombs he made and who he targeted so far. This is what we talked about during our discussion about our book.
4.Person D should share his/her questions with the group, as well as post the questions on the group's wiki page
Week Three: October 15
Topic: Mood/Tone (section 3 out of 5 of your text)
Assignment:
1. On your group's wiki page, discuss the mood or tone of your book.What is the overriding emotion of this book? What examples back up your claim? (B) The mood of this book is very dark. The book talks about the life and mind of Ted Kaczynski. It talks about how he made the bombs and the life that he lives from day to day.
2. Person B should share and discuss their selected quotations, using Save The Last Word techniques.
3.
Brian Wertheim
Did Ted Kaczynski have a social life at any point in his life?
No, he never did.
Why did Ted Kaczynski make the newspaper publish his 35,000 word essay?
So people would read his ideas and possibly agree with him.
Why do you think that nobody remembered who Ted Kaczynski was from school?
Nobody remembered him because he was very anti-social.
If you were as smart as Ted Kaczynski and had a teaching job at the University of California, would you quit it to go live in the woods in Montana?
No, I would continue my job.
Do you think the Unabomber will carry out his threat of bombing an airplane?
I think that he may try because he has a known hatred of airlines, but I don’t think he will make it through security and end up caught and in jail.
4.Person D should share his/her questions with the group, as well as post the questions on the group's wiki page
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Mood of book
Brian shared his questions and we all answered them David had no quotes so we really didn’t talk about them The mood of the book we said was really dark because it’s about a detective trying to find a man who is a serial killer
Week Four: October 22
Topic: Themes/Images (section 4 out of 5 of your text)
Assignment:
1. On your group's wiki page, discuss the themes and images that your book contains. What are some of the images that are used? What do they seem to represent? Why do you think the author uses these images to convey his or her meaning?
The themes and images of this book are pretty dull. This book really just conveys facts about the case of the unabomber instead of being a deep story.
2. Person B should share and discuss their selected quotations, using Save The Last Word techniques.
page 95 "In 1990, census taker Joe Youderian, a volunteer fireman, was one of the few known to Kaczynski's cabin. He observed piles of books all over, including the works of Shakespeare and Thackeray, along with tools, but nothing suspicious was left out when Youderian was there.
page 98 " His failed romance was one of the few relationships between Ted and a woman the Kaczynski family could recall. the only other one they could think of was a very brief association with another woman in the early 1960's while Ted was pursuing his graduate degrees."
page 101 "Ted on the other hand (again, if this is proven in a court of law) remained a recluse and filled the frustrations and emotional emptiness in his life by creating bombs to hurt and kill people he'd never met or knew only vaguely, and to upset the workings of a society with which he interacted poorly, if at all."
page 109 "The agents investigating the cabin reasonably concerned that the premises might have be booby-trapped with explosive devices, so before they went in themselves they sent in an FBI explosives team led by Special Agent Thomas Mohnal."
page 117 "Professor Patrick Fischer of Vanderbilt University remembers the day in 1982, when the pipe bomb in the wooden box mailed to him exploded and injured his secretary. His connection? Fischer had visited his father, a professor in the mathematics department at Michigan while Kaczynski was a student there.
Steven Gallagher
3.
Today we talked about how the Unabomber was captured. He was found in his 10x12 foot shack outside of Lincoln, Montana. He had no running water or electricity. He would shower 2 or 3 times per weak and slept on a mattress on the floor. The most technological device he had was an old typewriter with which he wrote his manifesto. He had many books on anti-technology as well as bomb making books. He also had bombs that were near completed when he was captured.
Theodore Kaczynski explained to the authorities how once his bomb was ready, he would wrap it and put the appropriate postage stamps on it. He would then ride his bike to a bus stop where he would board a bus. He got on busses that took him from Montana to San Francisco, Salt Lake City, or anywhere in between. He would then mail his bomb and return by bus to his shack.
Brian Wertheim
4.Person D should share his/her questions with the group, as well as post the questions on the group's wiki page
Week Five: October 29 (LAST MEETING)
Topic: Responding to the Text (section 5 out of 5 of your text)
Assignment:
1. On your group's wiki page, discuss your final reflections on this book. Would you recommend it to peers? Why or why not? Has this topic been discussed more/less effectively in another book or books? Should this book be considered for the school's curriculum? (B)
Brian Wertheim
It was more a book just about the case, it didn't have a plot. Because of this, I would not recommend this book to people for this reason.
2. Person B should share and discuss their selected quotations, using Save The Last Word techniques.
3. Person C should post the meeting summary on the group's wiki page after class.
This week we talked about the ending of our book. Our group also talked about his court trials. We talked about Ted's jail sentence and how he was to spend the rest of his life in jail without the possibility of parole. Even if he did good deeds while in jail and did not do anything wrong while he is in there he still can never get out. He is in a jail in Colorado called Supermax. This is a jail for mass murders, bombers, and people who have done the worst things that you could think of go to this prison. He will never be a free man ever again.
4.Person D should share his/her questions with the group, as well as post the questions on the group's wiki page
Book Club Schedule
You should divide your book into 5 equal sections. For example, if your book has 100 pages, you should have five 20 page sections. You should read the appropriate section for each meeting.Requirements:
Groups will decide appropriate penalties for group members who fail to uphold their responsibilities.
NOTE: If your book club has three members, the roles B and C should be combined; if your book club has five members, two students should take the role of C (5 questions each).
Week One: October 1
Topic: Characters (Section 1 out of 5 of your text)
Assignment:
1. On your group's wiki page, describe the main characters in your text. What makes them interesting? What is their story or background? Why are you drawn to them? Conversely, are there any characters that you just cannot stand? Why not? (A)
Brian Wertheim
The main characters so far have been the author, and the unabomber: Theodore Kaczynski. The first chapter the author talks about he interviewed previous serial killers to inside their head. One person he keeps referring to is George Metesky. I was drawn to them to hear how they portray the crimes that they committed.
2. Person B should share and discuss their selected quotations, using Save The Last Word techniques.
Evan Angles
"Criminals are no different than law abiding people when it comes to being creatures of habit”
“The communications Finney showed Brussel were the work of a neat, obsessively meticulous man”
“I was drinking too much, exercising like a fiend because I was too wound up to relax, and doing all the things I’ve always counseled the people I who work for me not to do.”
“Those were just 3 of the 150 or so active cases I was working on at that time.”
“The newspaper photos of the captured mad bomber show a smiling man with a twinkle in his eye who is clearly enjoying all the attention and publicity. I find this very significant.”
3.
4.Person D should share his/her questions with the group, as well as post the questions on the group's wiki page
Steven Gallagher
1. How many bombs did the "Mad Bomber" plant and where were they placed?
The "Mad Bomber" planted 32 bombs during a 16 year period. He planted the bombs in public places all around New York City.
2. Why do you think the author put in a chapter about his childhood about another bomber?
The author put this into the book because when he was a child he remembered how they caught the bomber. The police went to a psychiatrist and the psychiatrist gave the police a good place of where to find him. They began to look for him and the psychiatrist was right where he said he was going to be. So this might show how they are going to find this bomber.
3. Why did the Police go to a psychiatrist to help close the case and find the bomber?
The police went to a psychiatrist because they needed to know how to get into the head of a bomber. This helps them start at a base and can work from there.
4. Did the psychiatrist help find the bomber they were looking for?
Yes, he did because the psychiatrist gave the police a good description of what he would look like and where he would live. The police went out to where the psychiatrist said to look for and he was right.
5. If it wasn't for the psychiatrist would the police have found the "Mad Bomber?"
Yes, I think the police would have eventually found this "Mad Bomber" but there could have been more bombs and there could be more deaths because of him.
Week Two: October 8
Topic: Language (Section 2 out of 5 of your text)
Assignment:
1. On your group's wiki page, discuss the type of language that your book contains. Is it easy to read? Conversational? "Classic"? Does it use a lot of words you don't understand? What grade level do you think the book is written at, and why? (B)
2. Person B should share and discuss their selected quotations, using Save The Last Word techniques.
Brian Wertheim
Page 55
“In the letter, the bomber blamed computers for a variety of problems, ranging from invasion of privacy to “environmental degradation through excessive economic growth.” Notwithstanding the “Freedom Club” reference, maybe I’d been right all along about F.C. meaning “F * Computers” to this guy, at least subconsciously.”
Page 37
“Like George Metesky and most other cowardly “distance crime” offenders, he wouldn’t be comfortable around other people, certainly not to the extent that he would trust them.”
Page 56
““People with advanced degrees aren’t as smart as they think they are. If you’d had any brains you would have realized that there are a lot of people out there who resent bitterly the way techno-nerds like you are changing the world and you wouldn’t have been dumb enough to open an unexpected package from an unknown source.””
Page 54
“It may be that the bomber felt compelled to get back into the limelight after other had moved definitively into center stage. The mammoth World Trade Center towers were bombed on Feb. 26, 1993 by Islamic terrorists in New York City. The F.B.I. engaged in a six-week standoff with the Branch Davidian sect in Waco, Texas, before the entire compound went up in an apocalyptic blaze on April 19, 1993, just as its messianic leader had predicted.”
Page 53
“And this man was diabolical. Repeatedly, the Unabomber had carefully disguised his books to look like ordinary objects or packages – a notebook in one case, a pile of wood in another. But he was even cleverer than that. In at least two cases, he put insufficient postage on his mail-bomb packages, apparently so they would be sent back to the listed sender, who in fact was the bomber’s real intended target. Whatever delusional system he might be operating under, it was clearly not one that rendered him irrational or erratic. While clearly disturbed, he was a sane individual with the ability to organize, plan, and think many steps ahead.”
3. Person C should post the meeting summary on the group's wiki page after class.
In our group discussion we talked about the life of the Unabomber. We talked about the cabin that he lived in, also we talked about how he went to Harvard at the age of 16. In this discussion we also talked about what kind of bombs he made and who he targeted so far. This is what we talked about during our discussion about our book.
4.Person D should share his/her questions with the group, as well as post the questions on the group's wiki page
Week Three: October 15
Topic: Mood/Tone (section 3 out of 5 of your text)
Assignment:
1. On your group's wiki page, discuss the mood or tone of your book.What is the overriding emotion of this book? What examples back up your claim? (B) The mood of this book is very dark. The book talks about the life and mind of Ted Kaczynski. It talks about how he made the bombs and the life that he lives from day to day.
2. Person B should share and discuss their selected quotations, using Save The Last Word techniques.
3.
Brian Wertheim
- Did Ted Kaczynski have a social life at any point in his life?
No, he never did.- Why did Ted Kaczynski make the newspaper publish his 35,000 word essay?
So people would read his ideas and possibly agree with him.- Why do you think that nobody remembered who Ted Kaczynski was from school?
Nobody remembered him because he was very anti-social.- If you were as smart as Ted Kaczynski and had a teaching job at the University of California, would you quit it to go live in the woods in Montana?
No, I would continue my job.- Do you think the Unabomber will carry out his threat of bombing an airplane?
I think that he may try because he has a known hatred of airlines, but I don’t think he will make it through security and end up caught and in jail.4.Person D should share his/her questions with the group, as well as post the questions on the group's wiki page
Version:1.0 StartHTML:0000000192 EndHTML:0000003005 StartFragment:0000002376 EndFragment:0000002969 SourceURL:file://localhost/Users/angelsev/Desktop/English/Book%20club%203%20notes.doc
Mood of book
Brian shared his questions and we all answered them
David had no quotes so we really didn’t talk about them
The mood of the book we said was really dark because it’s about a detective trying to find a man who is a serial killer
Week Four: October 22
Topic: Themes/Images (section 4 out of 5 of your text)
Assignment:
1. On your group's wiki page, discuss the themes and images that your book contains. What are some of the images that are used? What do they seem to represent? Why do you think the author uses these images to convey his or her meaning?
The themes and images of this book are pretty dull. This book really just conveys facts about the case of the unabomber instead of being a deep story.
2. Person B should share and discuss their selected quotations, using Save The Last Word techniques.
page 95 "In 1990, census taker Joe Youderian, a volunteer fireman, was one of the few known to Kaczynski's cabin. He observed piles of books all over, including the works of Shakespeare and Thackeray, along with tools, but nothing suspicious was left out when Youderian was there.
page 98 " His failed romance was one of the few relationships between Ted and a woman the Kaczynski family could recall. the only other one they could think of was a very brief association with another woman in the early 1960's while Ted was pursuing his graduate degrees."
page 101 "Ted on the other hand (again, if this is proven in a court of law) remained a recluse and filled the frustrations and emotional emptiness in his life by creating bombs to hurt and kill people he'd never met or knew only vaguely, and to upset the workings of a society with which he interacted poorly, if at all."
page 109 "The agents investigating the cabin reasonably concerned that the premises might have be booby-trapped with explosive devices, so before they went in themselves they sent in an FBI explosives team led by Special Agent Thomas Mohnal."
page 117 "Professor Patrick Fischer of Vanderbilt University remembers the day in 1982, when the pipe bomb in the wooden box mailed to him exploded and injured his secretary. His connection? Fischer had visited his father, a professor in the mathematics department at Michigan while Kaczynski was a student there.
Steven Gallagher
3.
Today we talked about how the Unabomber was captured. He was found in his 10x12 foot shack outside of Lincoln, Montana. He had no running water or electricity. He would shower 2 or 3 times per weak and slept on a mattress on the floor. The most technological device he had was an old typewriter with which he wrote his manifesto. He had many books on anti-technology as well as bomb making books. He also had bombs that were near completed when he was captured.
Theodore Kaczynski explained to the authorities how once his bomb was ready, he would wrap it and put the appropriate postage stamps on it. He would then ride his bike to a bus stop where he would board a bus. He got on busses that took him from Montana to San Francisco, Salt Lake City, or anywhere in between. He would then mail his bomb and return by bus to his shack.
Brian Wertheim
4.Person D should share his/her questions with the group, as well as post the questions on the group's wiki page
Week Five: October 29 (LAST MEETING)
Topic: Responding to the Text (section 5 out of 5 of your text)
Assignment:
1. On your group's wiki page, discuss your final reflections on this book. Would you recommend it to peers? Why or why not? Has this topic been discussed more/less effectively in another book or books? Should this book be considered for the school's curriculum? (B)
Brian Wertheim
It was more a book just about the case, it didn't have a plot. Because of this, I would not recommend this book to people for this reason.
2. Person B should share and discuss their selected quotations, using Save The Last Word techniques.
3. Person C should post the meeting summary on the group's wiki page after class.
This week we talked about the ending of our book. Our group also talked about his court trials. We talked about Ted's jail sentence and how he was to spend the rest of his life in jail without the possibility of parole. Even if he did good deeds while in jail and did not do anything wrong while he is in there he still can never get out. He is in a jail in Colorado called Supermax. This is a jail for mass murders, bombers, and people who have done the worst things that you could think of go to this prison. He will never be a free man ever again.
4.Person D should share his/her questions with the group, as well as post the questions on the group's wiki page